26 Nov 2016

When I came back from my travels with Amuna I was not too sure what to do with my life. I knew that I wanted to study at one point and I kind of knew in which direction I would like to educate myself but I wasn't quite ready to start yet at that certain point in my life.

Only 19 years old, hungry for experience, new places, new people. I was so hooked on travelling. Eventhough we explored 10 countries together and had the best time ever I felt like I still needed to explore a little bit more, do something diffrent and most important, do it by myself. Get to know myself even better. Force myself into spending some alone time and finally figure out what to do with my life.

When Amuna and I worked in New Zealand I already fancied the idea of working abroad. It brings so much great experience, helps my English skills to increase and makes it possible to actually feel how it is to live in a country instead of only visiting it. Living in an own apartment, having foreign work mates and bosses, opening a bank account, paying taxes, making local friends - that's what enables someone to have a real impression of a country in my opinion.

So when I made plans to travel even more I was looking for countries where I could get a Working Holiday Visa. Especially South America, Canada and Japan caught my attention. But I wanted to do South America for at least a year so I delayed that idea for other times. I knew that I wanted to be gone from November to spring or summer of the following year so I had to come up with plans for travelling in winter. And all over sudden it hit me. I should work at a ski resort. Skiing always has been one of my greatest passions and because of my final exams and the journey with Amuna I wasn't possible to go two years in a row. I knew that as well Canada as Japan had world famous ski resorts. But since I've already been to Canada and always have been very curoius about Japan I decided to look into jobs for this Asian country.

For there was no snow in Germany or Austria yet I wasn't able to pass my Ski Instructor License but I was lucky enough to find a job as a Kid Ski Instructor at Rusustu Resort (which is placed on Japan's north island Hokkaido and I heard before of because of its world famous powder snow).

After a written application, a skype interview and the the application for the Working Holiday Visa I was finally off to my new job.

The company which helped me to find the job picked me and a few other Kid's instructors up in Tokyo. You could tell that everybody was very exited and quite unsure what was about to happen in the next couple of months. Up to that point I didn't even know what exactly my job would be since the desription they gave us a couple of weeks before was very vague. There were instructors from Tawain, Canada, England, Australia and many other nationalities. For the first day we drove to a Kid's School which was still on Japan's main island, three hours away from Tokyo. They showed as the program and system on how they organized their lessons and also drove us to a nice and cozy house where two of the international instructors would live among a few Japanese skiing teachers. It was 20 minutes away from the mountain, quite comfortable and everybody seemed very friendly.

After a night with some homemade tawainese soup, hilarious travel stories and not enough sleep, my Rusustu work mates (a girl and a guy from Canada, a girl from Hong Kong and a girl from Tawain) and I got droven to the airport where we jumped on a small air plane which brought us up to Hokkaido.

When we took the bus to the resort we still had that little nice house in mind and expected something simular awaiting us. You can imagine how suprised we where when the bus stopped infront a giagentic buidling which reminded me of some sort of a mix inbetween a shopping mall and a hotel complex. As soon as we entered the massive house we were even more suprised when a talking tree and a huge merry-go-around in the lobby welcomed us. But that was just the start. We were only about to find out that this resort also had a swimming pool, an Onsen (which is a tradionel Japanese bathroom where you enjoy naked baths in hot springs along with a sauna, cold pool, massage chairs etc.), a gym, a rock climbing area, a gaming hall and several restaurants, bars and shops. We couldn't believe it. It was like living in Disneyland with a little robot cruising around and a music band which constisted of stuffed dogs playing awful western songs. We also figured out that there where about another 35 International, 35 Japanese and 15 Chinese Instructors. Eventhough everything was quite absurd and there were so many new impressions I immediately fell in love with this place.

And latest at my first day of skiing powder at the Resort I knew that I had an amazing time ahead of me.